I am wondering what sender I need for this tach it is going in a 1941 ford with a flathead 8 and it is 12 volt. the car has a voltage drop installed so that the gauges and the ignition system are 6v
You'll need a little yellow-y orange plate that fits between your rotor and distributor cap for your specific engine. Almost impossible to find...you're better off sending it to a speedo shop to convert it to modern guts. JohnnyA
This really bugs me. There is 12V flying all over a modern car, why doesn't some electronics hot-shot put together a board that can supply these old tachs with the proper power? Don't we have any 12-year olds on this board?
The 12 year olds are busy playing call of duty 4 or world of Warcraft or whatever's popular these days. Besides, all the radio shacks are gone so where you gonna buy the components to build it? JohnnyA
The proper tach? Have you priced out a wings era manual tach? Not to mention all the little nuts and bolts to mount it to your crank...you can drop $2500 on a functioning vintage tach.
FLOORBOARD....the tach in your photo IS NOT a mechanical "wings" tach...If you are wanting to use the one in photo,just send it to Williamsons Inst,Chester Ark,,They will modify it for you.
I've been researching and buying vintage SW gear for decades and have never seen the tach drive for your tach made for a 59A style flathead. They did make them for the later 8BA distributors, but even those are very rare and expensive. It's an inch thick orangey-tan plastic piece that clips between the distributor and cap, with it's guts spun by the distributor shaft to generate a current that in turn runs a small motor in the tach head. Really complex, and technology that nobody has used in over 50 years. You might be able to find a sender on Ebay but I can pretty much guarantee it will cost you more than the tach did. Do as said above and have it converted to modern guts inside that old tach body.
I think you missed my point, when you said get the "proper" tach I assumed you were talking about buying a manual tach. I'm well aware that the tach shown is an electrical unit that requires an archaic plastic plate that goes between the cap and rotor. In the second post I suggested having a speedo shop put modern guts into to save the trouble of finding the near non-existent distributor plate. JohnnyA
And you also need the extension clips for the distributor cap, and the cable to go in between the two. It has the matching 3 prong plugs that are also hard to find. Gary
As alchemy mentions the Ford distributor plates were made for the 8BA engines, I haven't seen them for the earlier engines either. So even if you find one, it wouldn't work for a 41.
Cool tach and if you don't end up using it I would be interested in buying it and I would spend the bucks to have it converted. Not cheap to do, but it is a cool look.
It is not difficult to convert to modern guts. I have done it before. Buy a cheap electric tach at a swap meet.
Well, that just means the engine swap options are narrowed down a bunch. Studebaker donor cars watch out!
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